To be respected by those beneath us, we must respect those above us! Before educating the rabble, educate yourselves! Enlightened people, enlighten yourselves! Because of your disdain for superiority, you think you have abundant good sense, you are positive, you are practical. One is never really practical unless he carries it a little farther.... You would not enjoy the benefits of industry if your ancestors of the eighteenth century had had other ideals than common usefulness. How we scoffed at Germany—at her dreamers, her ideologists, her ethereal poets! Our milliards compensated her for the time well employed in perfecting plans. It seems to me, it was the dreamer Fichte who reorganized the Prussian army after Jena; and that the poet Koërner sent a few Uhlans against us about 1813!
You practical? Come! You cannot even hold a pen or a gun! You let convicts rob, imprison, and slaughter you! You have lost even the brute’s instinct of defence; and when not only your life, but your purse (which ought to be dearer to you), is in danger, you lack the energy to drop a ballot into a box! With all your capital, all your wisdom, you never can form an association equal to l’Internationale! All your intellectual efforts consist of trembling for the future. Think! Hasten! or France, between a hideous demagogy and a stupid bourgeoisie, will sink lower and lower!
Gustave Flaubert.
SELECTED
C O R R E S P O N D E N C E
OF
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
WITH AN
INTIMATE STUDY OF THE AUTHOR
BY
CAROLINE COMMANVILLE
SIMON P. MAGEE
PUBLISHER
CHICAGO, ILL.
Copyright, 1904, by
M. WALTER DUNNE
——
Entered at Stationers’ Hall, London